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The Parents 

of 

Abraham 
Lincoln 



By WILLIAM E. BARTON 



t?^ll71ilfA1!l7aB1illTiillTT<CT»rie^.lMMMfc^«teaiM^^ 



The Parents of 
Abraham Lincoln 



An Address by 
WILLIAM E. BARTON 



.1 uthor of "The Soul of A braham Lincoln'' ^^The Paternity 
of AbrdJiani Lincoln/' etc. 



Delivei'cd at tlie grave of Tliomas Lincoln, Goose Xest 
IMaiiie, near Janesville, Illinois, 
September 18, 1922. 



CHARLESTON, ILLINOIS 

The Charleston Daily Courier 

1922 



Liner. 



THE CELEBRATIOX AT SHILOH 



Shiloli Cliiircli, wliicli adjoins the cemetery wliere 
Tlionias Lincoln and Sarah Bush Lincoln are biii*ied, was 
recently remodeled and its facilities were enlarged. A 
service of rededication was held, and a memorial window 
was dedicated to the memory of Thomas and Sarah Lin- 
coln. Shortly after this rededication, a notable Lincoln 
celebration was held, and attended by people from the 
neighborhood and from several adjacent towns. A number 
of people were present who had personally known Thomas 
Lincoln, and many who had known his widow. The 
speaker of the day was Dr. AYilliani E. Barton, who de- 
livered two addresses, one on "The Greatness of Abraham 
Lincoln" and the other on ''The Parents of Abraham Lin- 
coln." The church was packed to its capacity for the 
morning address. This was followed by a picnic dinner, 
and reunion of old friends. The afternoon meeting was 
held out of dooi-s, in tlie cemetery. Dr. Barton delivered 
his address standing beside the graves of Thomas and 
Sarah Lincoln. 



c^> 



The Parents of Abraham Lincoln 



Tliicc mighty forces go to the iiiaking of any man. 
First is that mysterious element of pei-sonality Avherein 
every man dill'ers from every other man. >i'o two men, 
even though born of the same i)areiits and reared in the 
same surroundings, prove to be Avliolly simihir. Xo two 
leaves \\\Hn\ the tree, no two blad(\s of grass, no tw() thumb- 
prints of the human hand, no two- brains, no two charac- 
ters are precisely alike. The second of the forces which, 
make us what we are is heredity. Every man is what he 
is partly because of what his parents, his grandparents 
and his remote ancestors were. The third of these forces 
is environment. Every man's life is shaped by the influ- 
ence of other lives, by soil, climate, and other conditions 
surrounding him. The life of xVbraham Lincoln was Avhat 
it was partly because of his successive environments, 
partly because of his inheritance, and pai-tly because of 
his own personality. It is fitting that we should consider 
today something of his iidieritance thiough his father, 
Thomas Lincoln, his mother, Xancj' Hanks, and the subse- 
quent influence upon him of his devoted step-mother, Sarah. 
Bush Johnson, the second wife of Thomas Lincoln. 

It is surprising that so little reliable Avork has been 
done in this field. On the death of Abraham Lincoln no 
member of the Lincoln family Avas present at his funeral 
save his AvidoAV, Mary Todd Lincoln, and her tAvo surviving 
sons, Robert and Thomas. Although most of the Todds 
Avere Confederates, there AAere Todd relatives at the fu- 
neral, but no Lincoln. There has been but little oppor- 
tunity to learn to Avhat extent Abraham Lincoln AA^as a 
Lincoln. His OAvn contact Avith the Lincoln family Avas 
exceedingly meager. 

This AA-^e knoAv, howeA^er, that Abraham Lincoln Avas 
thoroughly a Lincoln. We know enough of the Lincoln 
family traits to assure ourselves that hoAvever great the 
contrast betAAcen him and either of his parents, he had an 
important heritage from both. While Thomas Lincoln 
never could have been as great a man as his son. and Avhile 
Nancy Hanks never contemplated the possibility of herself 
becoming a notable woman, each of these two gave some- 
thing important to the making of Lincoln. The picture 
of Nancy Hanks, Avhich has come doAvn to us, is vague in 
its outline and elusive in its definition. But Lincoln him- 
self said of his mother that she Avas a Avoman of strong 

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mind and cliaracter and that from hei- lie inherited his 
power of analysis and his logical mind. Thomas Lincoln 
died before his son became famous, and he was held in no 
very high regard by Lincoln's earlier biographers; but in 
proportion as we come to know the Lincolns, and tO' be 
able to form some judgment of the character of Thomas 
Lincoln, we find him to have been indispensable in the 
heredity of his great son. 

No one of us can spare any one of his ancestors. There 
is no way in which Ave can short-circuit the line of descent 
so as to cut out the obscurest and least interesting of tliem.. 
Each one of them, male and female, is indispensable in his 
or her own generation ; and had the place of any one man 
or any one woman among them been taken by any other 
man or woman in that generation, we should not be what 
now we are. 

We have tO' reckon A\lth Abraham Lincolij, as he was ; 
and it is in some respects a minor question how he came 
to be what he w^as ; but this we know% that his personality 
w^as a strange compound of diverse elements, some of them 
inherited from his paternal and some from his maternal 
lines, and that he needed all of them to be Abraham Lin- 
coln. 

80 much of error has been printed as truth, it may be 
w^ell to give a few dates and other biographical data. 

First of all, the dates giA^en on the tombstone of 
Thomas Lincoln, I am confident, are correct, and not those 
furnished in some of the biographies. He was born in 
Rockingham County, Virginia, January 7, 1778, and he 
died January 15, 1851. He was the youngest of three sons, 
and next to the youngest of five children of Abraham and 
Bathsheba Lincoln. His father was not twice married ; 
the five children were all children of one mother, who re- 
moved to Kentucky with her husband in 1782, and long- 
survived him. Abraham Lincoln the elder was killed by 
Indians in May, 178(), and not in 1784, as is usually stated. 
Thomas Lincoln learned the carpenter's trade. He was 
probably not a very skilled carpenter, but he was compe- 
tent to do the kind of work which the frontier required. 

Xancy Hanks, first wife of Thomas Lincoln, and 
mother of the President, was born in Virginia in 1783 ; 
removed with her family to Kentucky in early childhood ; 
was married to Thomas Lincoln by Rev. Jesse Head on 
~~1^K-h Fork, in Washington Oounty, 011 June 12, 1806. 
With her husband and children she removed to Indiana 
in 1810, and she died October 5, 1818. 

4 



Sarah or Sally Bush, second wife of Thomas Lincoln, 
lived in ElizabetlitoAvn, Kentucky, and nianied, first, 
Daniel Johnston, by whom she had three children, John 
D., Sarah and iMjitilda. Alt(M- the death of her first hns- 
baud, she married Thomas Lincoln Decembei- 2, ISIJ). Slie 
was a good motlier. both to hei- own childi-en and to the 
two children of Tlnunas Lincoln, Sarah and Abraham. 
She died April 10, 18(59, and is buried here l)esi(h' her hus- 
band. Her influence upon tlie life of Abraham Lincoln 
was wholly o(,od. Me held her in honor, and she clKMished 
his memory Avith a beautiful and truly motherly affection. 
Standing here today by the grave of Thomas Lincoln, 
and that of his second Avife, Sally Kush, the second mother 
of Abraham Lincoln, Ave have to remind ourselves that 
there is much need of re\ision of popular knoAvledge, or 
what passes for knoAvledge, conceining Lincoln's i)arents. 
His step-mother survived him, and lived to be interviewed 
by the earliei- biographers. She Avas able to bear her testi- 
mony that Abraham Avas ahvays a good boy and lun'er 
spoke to her a cross Avord, and that she loved him as her 
OAvn son. But Thomas and Nancy Lincoln died long before 
Abraham, and there is much error commonly accepted aw 
truth in the literature concerning both of them. 

It is often alleged that the name of Thomas Lincoln 
Avas not Lincoln but Linkhorn. A'arious authors have de- 
clared that this branch of the family neA^er wrote the name 
as Lincoln until Abraham Lincoln himself obtained suffi- 
cient education to settle the spelling. As recent a Aviitei- 
as Norman Hapgood says of Thomas Lincoln, or Linkhorn, 
''His name Avas under the circumstances unstable, but in 
Imliana it shoAA^ed a general drift toAvard Lickern, aAvay 
from the favorite Kentucky form of Linkhorn, settling its 
present spelling many years later in Illinois." Mr. Hap- 
good is Avn-ong in this and in much besides. In the back- 
Avoods, not only the name of Lincoln but most other- names 
Avere mispronounced and missijelled, but I have not found 
one single instance of its being misspelled by a member of 
the family. Thomas Lincoln and Thomas Lincoln's father 
Abraham and Thomas Lincoln's uncle Thomas, for Avhom 
he AA^as named, and his grandfath(M- and his great-grand- 
father all signed theii' names Lincoln. 

It is often alleged and commonly believed that 
Thomas Lincoln Avas taught to read and Avrite by his first 
Avife, Nancy Hanks. On the conti-ary, he signed his name 
before he Avas married. We have reason to believe that 
Nancy Hanks did Avrite, but in the onlv document that has 

5 



been discovered executed by these two, Thomas Lincoln 
sijined liis name and Xancy made liei- mark. It is true that 
Tlioiuas Lincoln's edncation was very meager. As his 
famous son said of him, he was able "'bungiingly to write 
liis own name" and that Avas all. But that was something 
of a distinction in a time when so many men in contem- 
porary life and with lilvc advantages signed their names 
with a cross. 

It is often alleged that Thomas Lincoln was cheated 
out of his inheritance by his two older brothers, Mordecai 
and Josiah, Mordecai taking the whole property by right 
of primogeniture and distiibuting a minor portion to 
Josiah by leaving Thonms entirely unprovided for. On the 
contrary, it appears that Mordecai as heir-at-law of his 
father represented honorably the interests of the whole 
family. Soon after Thonms Lincoln became of age he was 
able tO' buy an improved farm and to pay for it in cash. 
The money presumably had come to him through the set- 
tlement of his father's estate. 

A^ery nearly everything that has been written about 
Thomas Lincoln's three farms in Kentucky is wrong. The 
historians and biographers, even the best of them, have 
the three hopelessly mixed up, and hardly anything that 
they tell about them is authentic. 

It is commonly asserted that Thomas Lincoln and liis 
first wife, Xancy Hanks, were first cousins, she being the 
daughter of Joseph and Nancy Shipley Hanks, and he the 
sou of Abraham and Mary Shipley Lincoln, and that 
Nancy was brought up by a third of the five Shipley sis- 
ters, her dear Aunt Lucy, T\ife of Richard Berry. Thomas 
Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were not cousins; we might 
even go the Hibernian length of saying that "neither of 
them were cousins." Her mother Avas not Nancy Shipley 
and his mother was not Mary Shipley, and her Aunt Lucy 
was not Aunt Lucy, but Avas named Rachel and there was 
no proof that she was Nancy's aunt. 

It is commonly asserted that Thomas Lincoln was 
virtually a pau])er, and pathetic stories are told of the ex- 
treme poverty of himself and Avife at the time of the birth 
of Abraham. The Lincoln family was poor, even as pov- 
erty is judged in the backAvoods ; but tlier-e exist records of 
certain purchases made by Thomas Lincoln of articles for 
the home, shoAving that even in those primitive days in the 
backwoods of Kentucky the discomfort was not quite so 
great nor the povei-ty so wretched as has been described. 

Authors have seemed to feel the necessity of going to 








ono 01- two extremes in theii- description of the early life 
of LiiKoln. Eithei- they icU'alize it, so that there is no real 
povei'ty, or they exaiiiicrate conditions of sijiialor to utter 
wretchedness. Neither is (jiiite true. 

It is often aftiinicd that Thomas Lincoln owned no 
live stock, and had to boiiow horses with Avhich to make 
his migration from Kentucky. On the contrary, Thomas 
Lincoln owned a lioise befoic he Avas of auc and dnring 
his niai-ried life, as sliown by autjientic and contemporary 
lists, lie always had at least one horse and commonly more 
than one. There is evidence that he was somethint>' of a 
horse-breedei'. At one time he owned a stallion and sev- 
eral mares. He also owned cattle. 

It is often affii-med that Thomas Lincoln was a kind 
of i-eligions vagrant, having no settled religious life but 
drifting in a derelict way into one sect after another and 
being brought into chui-ch niembei'ship thiough the influ- 
ence of his second Avife. On the contrary, Thomas Lincoln 
Avas a member of the church in Kentucky, Avhere Nancy 
Hanks also appeal's to have been a member, and Avhen he 
joined the church in Indiana AAdth his second Avife, Sarah 
Bush Liiuoln. he joined by letter and she by experience. 
He Avas a church t.iember before she Avas. He was an offi- 
cial member of the church, sometimes acting as moderator, 
sometimes as referee in matters of arbitration betAveen 
chuich membei's, sometimes as delegate to other churches. 

Thomas Lincoln Avas an easy-going man, Avithout am- 
bition, and he cannot be called industrious. Eut he Avas 
friendly, honest, neighborly, and, judged by the standards 
of his day. temperate. He Avon the heaits of tAvo good 
women. The first of these Avas Nancy Haidvs, a chaste 
young woman, who l>equeathed to her son fine qualities of 
charactei-, temperament, dis])ositiou and poAver of mental 
grasp: Avhile he be(|ueathed a genial disposition, sound 
good sense, a Ioac of story-telling, and those companion- 
able qualities Avhich meant so mnch to the life of Abraham 
Lincoln. The other Avas Saiah Bush Lincoln, Avho made 
Thomas a loving and faithful Avife and Abraham a devoted 
mother. In her younger years she Avas alert, active, indus- 
trious and all her life she was a time and sincere Chris- 
tian Avoman. Much i>ity has l)een AA'asted upon her for haA^- 
ing married Thomas Lincoln. There is no cA^dence that 
she felt the need of such pity ; nor is it any libel upon her 
first husband to say that her second marriage brought her 
quite as nuich happiness as the first. 

Of the vast quantities of literature that have been pro- 

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(luced coiiceniing Tliomas Lincoln and liis tAvc marriages, 
not quite all is false, but more than half of it is in great 
n^ed of revision, and some is utter trash. The parents of 
Lincoln were undistinguished, but they were good people, 
and neither Lincoln nor Ave have any occasion to be 
ashamed of them. There is of course a marked contrast 
between their obscurity and his immortal fame, but except 
for them Ave should never have had him. They helped to 
make him the man he was. 

We hold in lasting honor the memory of Abraham 
Lincoln. We are in no danger of honoring him more 
highly than he deserves. He is worthy of all our devotion. 
But justi noAA" we are remembering; these humble folk, his 
parents, his father, his mother and his step-mother. They 
Avere a part of the common stuff of American life in that 
period of movement and of new settlement., Avith nothing 
to distinguish them above their neighbors, save this, only, 
that from their* home Avent forth into the world a mighty 
leader of mankind. We could not have expected that any 
such son as Abraham Lincoln should have gone forth from 
their cabin, but Ave have no reason to be sui'prised that 
such Avas the case. In their veins flowed good, sturdy, 
clean American blood. They Avere honest, virtuous, sober 
people. They were sincere and religious. With little edu- 
cation, they had good sense and good native ability. They 
contributed the (jualities which Avere essential to the 
heredity and early environment of the man Avho w^as to 
save this nation and to make it forever free. Let us honor 
today the honest, sturdy pioneers of Avhom they Avere fair 
average exam])les. Let us be glad that from homes as 
humble as theii-s and descended from families as little 
knoAvn to fame as theirs had been, so great a man could 
go forth. For this is one chief hope of American life, that 
our leaders ai-e to be made out of the stuff of our common 
manhood. From fathers and mothers as simple and un- 
pretentious as Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, from 
homes as poor as that, of Thomas Lincoln and Sally Bush, 
are to go forth men of learning and poAver. These are in 
large measure the hope of America, and increasingly are 
they to be the hope of the Avorld. 



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